A name is a holy place. The name is a womb that nourishes the one who bears it with all the love and hope mingled in the giving of the name. If not dictated by some angel, names are chosen carefully for for saints or statesmen, prophets or poets, family doctors or relatives or places with wonderful sounds. Names are chosen with love in gratitude or by faith in potential or for hope of intercession. Names carry meaning within them, every year of life drawing out the meaning of the life named.
I began to face death and its implications very young. I could never have imagined then how many kinds of death there were to follow, one heaped upon another. The death that was the tragic loss of my country, Tibet, after the Chinese occupation. The death that is exile. The death of losing everything my family and I possessed ... for we had been among the wealthiest and most famous in Tibet.